This event is a special screening by Open City Docs Fest, London’s annual documentary film festival.

The sense of melancholia that runs through this programme acts like an elegy to the Twentieth Century ideologies and ideals of the left. Phil Collins’ interviews of ex-GDR teachers echo Rachel Garfield’s interviews with adult children of leftwing activists in the UK. Uriel Orlow departs from interview aesthetics and into the realm of poetic truth using science fiction as a form from which to explore nostalgia for old ideals. Chlala and Sansour set up a situation in which their protagonists improvise a conversation teasing out ideologies of nationhood and power.

Marxism Today (prologue) / Phil Collins / Germany / 2010 / 25’

The Straggle / Rachel Garfield / UK / 2012 / 20’

Remnants of the Future / Uriel Orlow / Armenia/UK / 2010 / 21’

Trespass the Salt / Larissa Sansour and Youmna Chlala / 2011/ Lebanon, Palestine, UK / 11’

The screening will be followed by a discussion with artists Larissa Sansour and Rachel Garfield and curator / filmmaker Treasa O’Brien of Open City Docs Fest.